Monthly Archives: October 2017

I started university at the end of September, and it’s full on already, man. I mean, right now I’m just taking a break from listening to some additional lecture material about standard deviation and z-scores, and later on I’ll be trying to approximately balance the evidence for and against the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis in time for a presentation.

Anyway what with this and that, I really haven’t been keeping up with my sleep research.

But on Saturday, hungover after dinner at a friend’s house,* my subconscious woke me up with a dream that K had just dumped me – by text, the cad. It wasn’t even spellingly or grammatically correct, which is all the more heartbreaking.

This morning, a dream about masturbation. No really, there was a Downton Abbey – style house in which lived a lot of aristocratic women who had never learnt how to masturbate. Two of the servant-girls slyly told them what they were missing. The aristocrats were too overcome with new-found delight to know that the servants were laughing behind their aprons at how pathetic their naive mistresses were.

Also, sitting at my computer studying, and being distracted by a large, dark grey owl that seemed to swoop directly towards my bedroom window, then change tack at the last moment to fly over the house instead.

* there were deep-fried olives, and homemade lamb ravioli! Juskers I’m a student don’t mean I have to eat pot noodles, yo.

Going back to university is great, but it will mean getting up at half past six twice a week, and as you know, I like my sleep. So I’ve been wondering how I’m going to manage.

The experience of many years tells me that lying in bed thinking I have to get up NOW. i have to get up NOW can take a long time to trigger the limbs into action. And an alarm clock on the other side of the room is no help at all if my still-dreaming self gets straight back into bed thinking it won’t do any harm because I’m definitely awake.

This morning I was lying in bed, thinking move your legs! you have to get up NOW. legs move! get up NOW so I could catch the bus round to K’s house. And I realised with sudden clarity that to interrupt that pattern, you need to have a lucid dream in which you see something you weren’t expecting.* The startling image would immediately jolt your body awake.